The Second Sunday of Lent
Psalm 27; Genesis 15:1-12,[13-16],17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35
You can also subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
I.
We continue our examination of the holy seed and the dead branches in the readings for this season of Lent.
You will recall that we’ve identified two examples of the holy seed so far.
In the first sermon we saw that Jesus was the holy seed.
After His transfiguration, He told His disciples that His ministry would seem to fail in Jerusalem, where He would be put to death.
We saw how Jesus compared Himself to a seed in John 12:24, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Next, we saw that the holy seed is the word of God.
We saw that Jesus used the example of a sower sowing seed. In Luke 8:11, He tells us that “The seed is the word of God.”
We saw how Jesus resisted every temptation of the devil by sowing a word from God, specifically from the book of Deuteronomy.
We also saw how Jesus’ ministry is primarily to the dead branches of old Israel.
I’ve said to you that these dead branches are all Jesus has to work with when building up His church.
But they are no good to Him as long as they remain dead branches.
We’ve seen then how Jesus describes Himself as the vine, His people as the branches, and that these dead branches grafted in are what restores them to life and health.
The means by which Jesus restores these dead branches – Him picking them (us) up and grafting them in – is His ministry of teaching, casting out demons, and healing.
In today’s reading from Luke, we see how seriously Jesus takes that ministry, so seriously that He is not concerned by the threat to his life posed by Herod that the Pharisees warn Him about.
Instead, He says, “Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.”
Last week, I spoke to you at length about the church as a political institution, by which I meant that she has a public role to play.
I said that the church’s public role was a condition of the covenant God has made with her.
I showed you from Deuteronomy 26 that the covenant is both liturgical and political, which means that God’s word has something to say both about how we worship Him and how we govern the land He has given us.
There are two challenges to the church’s public role.
The first comes from within the church herself.
When the church starts to think that all she has to do is to concern herself with the worship of God, that is when she begins to turn inward.
When this happens, her members start to see her primarily as a source of consolation or as a means for spiritual growth and personal transformation.
The church that loses its grasp on the political, who cannot or will not organize her members for civic good, to govern well, invariably comes to focus exclusively on the personal, the mystical, and the emotional.
When she fails to deliver the personal, mystical, or emotional high people are looking for, her members will leave.
The second challenge comes from outside of the church.
You will recall that I used the example of Muslims gathering in Times Square to pray at the beginning of Ramadan.
That example was meant to illustrate that when the church leaves the public square, it will be occupied by others, by people who understand that worship is political, even if their “worship” falls outside the covenant God has made with His church.
As we saw during Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, the devil is only too happy to give the public square to those who give their worship to him.
II.
This week, I’d like to examine the problem of the holy seed and what seems to be its failure to flourish.
Today we are looking at two texts, one from Genesis, the other from Luke, that both talk about sacrifice.
Both sacrifices, the one Abram performed at God’s command, and the one Jesus alludes to when He says, “for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem” foreshadow a terrible time to come, followed by a time of restoration.
For Abram, it is the terrible foreknowledge that his descendants will become slaves and “oppressed for four hundred years.”
For Jesus, it is the sad truth that the city He loves will be destroyed, because it has rejected Him. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken.”
In both cases, the holy seed failed to flourish.
In Abram’s case, his holy seed, his descendants, became entangled in the mesh of dead branches that was Egypt.
For Jesus, the dead branches Isaiah was sent to strike deaf and blind (lest they be healed by God’s word) now conspire to kill the holy seed Himself.
But these sacrifices also foretell restoration.
For Abram, God promises to liberate his enslaved seed. God says, “I will bring judgment on the nation which they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.”
For Jesus, there is the hope for the forsaken city that conspires to put Him to death. He says to them, “you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”
For us, we have this promise from Paul, found in today’s reading from Philippians, “our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.”
Allow me to pause here and say that the recovery of the church’s role in the political life of the nation does not come at the expense of personal spiritual maturity.
The goal of the Christian life is the physical transformation of our lowly bodies into a glorious body, like Christ’s resurrected body.
This is further fulfillment of Luke 6:40, which I have been emphasizing for two weeks now, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but every one when he is fully taught will be like his teacher.”
When we are fully taught, we will resemble Jesus Christ in every way. That means we will each be reclothed in bodies that can no longer become sick, bodies that can no longer die.
Let me point out another word Paul uses here, the word commonwealth. I simply want you to take note that Paul uses a political word, specifically, one that has to do with government.
Very briefly, let me just say that at the very least this passage from Philippians proves that the spiritual and physical transformation that we are undergoing as Christians has its origins in a political reality: a “commonwealth… in heaven.”
Now, you may say, “Yes, but it says that our commonwealth is in heaven. We are on earth, and the two must be kept separate, and also the First Amendment.”
But I ask you, is that what the Bible is about? Is the whole point of the biblical story to describe the ongoing and eternal separation of heaven and earth? That’s (quite literally) the definition of damnation and it sounds to me like the recipe for hell-on-earth.
Isn’t the Bible actually describing the ongoing colonization of earth by heaven? Isn’t it about the Reconquista, if you will, of territory lost to the devil, of the revitalization of the dead branches by the holy seed?
Isn’t that the meaning behind the motto on Connecticut’s State Seal, “Qui Transtulit Sustinet” as I explained last week?
III.
Very well, let’s move on and have a look at why, despite the promise of restoration, the holy seed often struggles to grow.
It says in Genesis 15:12 “As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram; and lo, a dread and great darkness fell upon him.”
I said last week that I didn’t think Jesus’ wilderness temptation could truly be called a “dark night of the soul,” but Abram’s story is different. I think that’s exactly what it was.
We know why too. He’s just been promised that he will have children, that his seed will become as numerous as the stars, but not before at least four generations of his seed are lost.
They are lost to slavery and bondage in Egypt, and, after they are brought out of Egypt by signs and wonders, they pervert themselves by committing idolatry.
They engage in a sexual orgy in front of two golden calves. Almost the entire generation that came out of Egypt cuts itself off from God and their punishment is to wander 40 years in the desert, never to enter the Promised Land.
The holy seed struggles for almost 400 years before God establishes it in the Promised Land.
The vine that was transplanted from Egypt really had to be sustained by God, because they were incapable of sustaining themselves.
This is the reason for Abram’s dread. Most of his seed are born to be slaves, born to wander, born to die. Truly, this is the stuff of the dark night of the soul.
The words fear and dread are both used to describe Abram’s mood that night.
God tells Abram in verse 1, “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield.” Later, Abram experiences “a dread and great darkness.”
So, why does the holy seed fail to flourish? Why does it produce four hundred years of dead branches? Is it because they were afraid? Is it their fear that led to their slavery, to their turning to idols and pleasure?
I think it might be because of the source of that fear, which is a lack of faith.
Throughout the Bible, in Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, 1 Corinthians, and Luke, we hear again and again that popular refrain, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
This is an idolatrous sentiment which the Bible condemns as many times as it repeats it.
Behind this sentiment is a lack of faith. It is an assertion that “This is all there is.” There is no spiritual maturity to be had, no bodily transformation to be hoped for.
The eating, drinking, and being merry only serve to mask the fear of tomorrow. Indeed, how can you face tomorrow without faith?
IV.
It will do you no good to tell you to face tomorrow with faith without telling you what that faith is and should be.
We have in today’s reading from Genesis the first and best example of faith in the Old Testament.
This example is so good that Paul refers to it in Romans 4:3. Paul asks, “What does Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Paul is settling, or attempting to settle, a question that still plagues Christians today: am I saved by what I do or by what I believe?
The answer is neither. Paul’s point is that we are saved because of who God is, not by what we do or what we believe.
Now, it is important to be very clear about this. Protestants have historically said that a man is saved by faith alone, and not by any good works that he happens to do.
Roman Catholics argue back that while faith is necessary, and that no one can be saved without it, we must cooperate with God and demonstrate that we have faith by doing good works.
Furthermore, some will argue that Abram’s belief, his faith, was a kind of good work.
Very well, what does the text say? It says, “And [Abram] believed the Lord; and [the Lord] reckoned it to [Abram] as righteousness.”
The solution to this is really quite simple, but you’ll need a little lesson in grammar to understand it.
In telling us this story about Abram, Moses is using a figure of speech that was very common in Ancient Hebrew, one that inverts the normal meaning of a word.
I will give you an example from a Psalm that, for a very long time, made no sense to me until I understood the use of this Hebrew idiom. Psalm 116:15 reads, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
This does not mean that God gets some perverse pleasure out of letting His saints die, which is, unfortunately, how it comes across in nearly all English translations.
The Message, a popular Bible paraphrase, actually gets the meaning right. It reads, “When they arrive at the gates of death, God welcomes those who love him.”
It is because the lives of God’s people mean so much to Him that their deaths are so precious. Death and life have been inverted in this figure of speech, because, in a very tender kind of way, God is looking forward to our deaths, so that He can welcome us home.
The same thing is happening in the phrase, “and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.”
It is because Abram’s faith is precious to the Lord that God decides to see it as something else, something more than it is on its own. God decides to see Abram’s faith as Abram’s righteousness.
This way of seeing things is entirely undeserved, but this is how God chooses to see His saints, which is all of us who put our trust in Him.
Finding the faith to face tomorrow comes down to this: we trust God to be who He says He is.
V.
God reveals Himself to be most fully who He is in His Son, the seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ.
Paul tells us in Galatians 3:16, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many; but, referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ which is Christ.” Here is one more proof from scripture that Christ is the holy seed and that we who are grafted into Him are the formerly dead branches.
Now, how does that help us explain why the holy seed so often fails to grow, why there is so often a lack of faith in our hearts and in our churches, which can quickly turn to fear in both?
To answer that, let’s go back to Abram’s dread and God’s command to “fear not.”
Despite Abram’s faith, he still wanted a sign. “O Lord God,” he asks, “how am I to know that I shall possess [the land]?”
What happens next is quite remarkable. God asks Abram to prepare a sacrifice, “a heifer three years old, a she-goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
Well, there’s nothing unusual about that. There is even nothing unusual about how Abram separates the carcasses, creating a path to walk between them.
This is exactly how a covenant agreement was ratified. The parties would walk between the animal carcasses to in effect say, “We will become like these sacrificed animals if we should ever break the terms of this agreement.” In other words, the usual penalty for breaking a solemn covenant was death.
The unusual thing is, Abram isn’t asked to walk between the sacrificed animals. God does not ask him to perform the ritual that would ratify the covenant.
Instead, a visible sign of God’s own presence, a fire pot and a torch, pass through the separated pieces.
When there is a sign in which to put our faith, it’s easier not to be afraid. Think of it this way: when you see the life vests on a ship, or the fire exits in a building, it puts you at ease. These things tell you that you need not fear in an emergency, because they are signs that someone has thought ahead. You will not drown in the water. There will be a way out of the burning building.
When that sign is a symbol of love, then that love drives out all fear. 1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”
When Abram divided the animal carcasses, he foreshadowed the many divisions of his descendants still to come: Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, and the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah — even today’s divisions and splits in the Christian church. These are all examples of the holy seed failing or seeming to fail.
Yet Abram did something very tender. Did you catch it?
As he surveyed the divided remains of his legacy, symbolized in these sacrificed animals, their dead bodies the sign of the curse that falls on all those who break the covenant, he did what any father would do.
He tried to save them.
Moses tells us that “when birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away.”
Many generations later, Abraham’s offspring, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, echoes the words of His patriarchal ancestor: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!”
How often would Jesus drive away the birds of prey that threaten His church, but we would not! Too often we invite those birds of prey to feast upon our disobedience.
That disobedience has been the subject of several of my recent sermons, so I won’t go into it again now.
The holy seed fails when there is no faith. Faith is the life-giving sap of the vine. Faith is the gift of Christ to His church. To all those who put their trust in Him, He reckons them as His own.
Preached on March 16, 2025 at the First Congregational Church, Woodbury, Connecticut.
Reflection Questions:
In what ways have you seen the pattern of sacrifice leading to restoration in your own life or community?
How does Jesus’ metaphor of the grain of wheat dying to bear fruit challenge your understanding of faith and growth?
What are some internal and external challenges facing the church today, and how can we respond in faith?
How does recognizing worship as a public and transformative act change the way you engage with your community?
What are the “birds of prey” in your life—things that threaten to devour your faith or the church’s mission? How can you drive them away?
Download the sermon handout here.
Share this post